Our ancestors have been curing meats for at least 3000 years. If you didn’t cure your meat, it would quickly spoil. From an evolutionary standpoint, our body has become accustom to a high nitrate diet.

As a knee-jerk reaction, the federal government jumped on the “findings” and began to write legislation limiting nitrates in deli meats to protect people from this “harmful carcinogen”.

But it turned out that the research wasn’t peer reviewed, there were no meaningful RCT’s, no double blind study – it was just their “expert opinion” based on a short experiment tested on rats.

In 1981, The National Academy of science reviewed the claims that MIT University had made, and concluded that nitrates are not carcinogenic to humans at all.

Then in 1983, The National Research Council examined the “dangers of nitrates” again and noted that MIT had not followed any of the guidelines that are required to publish a credible study result. The National Research council was quoted as saying the MIT study had “fatal flaws” and hadn’t been peer reviewed before publishing.

Since 1983 there has been at least 50 different studies – all failing to prove that nitrates are bad for you.

In fact some studies are suggesting nitrates may actually be good for us. Nitrates create nitric oxide which dilates our blood vessels, lowering our blood pressure and helping with erectile function. This has spurred research for nitrates being used therapeutically.

So if you’ve been depriving yourself of the joys of bacon for health reasons, you now have a new lease on life!

But beware: If you like your bacon extra crispy, be careful not to burn it. When nitrites are exposed to high heat, they can turn into compounds called nitrosamines.

There are many different types of nitrosamines… and most of them are carcinogenic.

The “dangers of bacon” aren’t the only diet lie we’ve been led to believe.